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cadenas -> RE: Texas Board of ED bans Thomas Jefferson from text books (3/13/2010 6:50:21 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: truckinslave
quote:
ORIGINAL: housesub4you
Well, it seems the Texas board of education knows what is best for the children of this country. Since they are the largest purchaser of school text books, most publishers only print what Texas wants in them and sells them to the rest of the country.
Seems like religion has way to much power in Texas, even the power to change one of the reason this country was founded.
"The Board refused to require that “students learn that the Constitution prevents the U.S. government from promoting one religion over all others.”
To avoid exposing students to “transvestites, transsexuals and who knows what else,” the Board struck the curriculum’s reference to “sex and gender as social constructs.”
The Board removed Thomas Jefferson from the Texas curriculum, “replacing him with religious right icon John Calvin.”
The Board struck the word “democratic” from the description of the U.S. government, instead terming it a “constitutional republic.”
http://thinkprogress.org/2010/03/12/texas-education-board-cuts-thomas-jefferson-out-of-its-textbooks/
I have been greatly encouraged by developments in Texas.
To deal with your highly disengenuous points, and by extension the miss-the-point comments previously made:
1. I missed, in skimming your link, anything that could be construed as dropping a requirement to teach the disesatblishment clause.
2.Sex and gender clearly are not "social constructs"
3.The board removed Jefferson only in the construct of requiring textbooks discuss him as impactful on "political revolutions from 1750 to the present". It's clear to me that the libs just don't want John Calvin or other religious figures discussed at all. From your link:
" Here’s the amendment Dunbar changed: “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.” Here’s Dunbar’s replacement standard, which passed: “explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.”
4. Your most ludicrous self-inflicted phony outrage. We are in fact a constitutional republic. I am so over hearing us described as a democracy.
If you think this is bad, wait until November.
1. The link provided actually does show that the board did not want to teach the disenfranchisement clause. Look at time stamps 11:33 (where the board talked about possibly taking out the whole First Amendment, and covering the Second Amendment instead), 12:28 (they discussed teaching religious freedom), 12:32 (when Cynthia Dunbar argued that the Founding Fathers didn't intend for separation of church and state and called teaching religious freedoms not "historically accurate"), and 12:35 when teaching religious votes failed on a straight party line vote.
2. Sex and gender aren't social constructs? Then What are they, and why do we have two different terms? The link actually talks about teaching the DIFFERENCE between sex and gender.
3. It wasn't just a minor change, but rather the impact of Enlightenment on a whole era. Along with Jefferson, they removed the whole concept of enlightenment! The new version just talks about "the writings of" as if this was an English class rather than history. And of course John Calvin is the antithesis of Enlightenment.
4. Of course the USA is a democracy, although some ideologues want to make it appear otherwise (I'm not even quite sure why - maybe it's because of the names of the parties?)
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